God, no condescension there! Thanks for the advice.

The whole diet/nutrition world is full of people that think they know best - everyone with a stomach has an opinion - "I know this one!" - so it is often necessary to go outside orthodoxy to get some logic/reason/experience from someone that actually knows.

I used to work in the bicycle trade and I don't wear a helmet. Car dependent people always have kittens about that, you can imagine their pokey fingers now... But I do wear a hi-viz jacket, so it is a prevention rather than harm reduction approach I take. If I can be seen then I won't get hit.

I also always sold the helmets because that was what customers wanted. Why leave that sweet profit on the table to sell them a $5 hi viz jacket instead? Their safety is not the same as my boss's profit motive. Priorities.

So I don't think there is a conspiracy to keep everyone with rotten teeth. Dentists are just in the same position as me selling bicycles. Why give people the lecture about being visible on the roads when they just want to dress in black from head to toe, wearing a helmet that they will not adjust correctly, for it to not work beyond anecdotal 'my mate's life was saved...' and for it to have inconvenience value?

With dentists there is an unsustainable regime. Nobody is flossing, brushing, mouth-washing and doing all these things that the dentist told them to do, it is almost always minimal effort.

I honestly think there is a very small market for a decent book that is for people that want good teeth and can sustain a sugar free diet.

After discovering the sugar in the toothpaste I looked into the alternatives and the arm 'n' hammer baking soda products seem the best out of the commonly available ones. Do I need to buy the $5 product that will only shift tartar after 10000 brushings or do I just get baking soda for $0.50 and strip off my enamel too, and in one brushing?!?!

I really like your tip on the tea. I quit coffee not as a permanent thing but as an everyday thing, for black tea. The idea was that coffee would have treat value. But alas I don't care for it now. I never saw myself as addicted even though that was all I drank for decades.

I am trying to develop course content for a cookery course where there is some A/B testing. One group get the 'eat your vegetables and do your exercise' message of condescension, whereas the other group get invited to do their own sugar free lifestyle change, in their own time and at their own pace so that they can stick it. I hope that the sugar free group succeeds, with the metric primarily being home cooking. With a sugar free 'streak' to maintain, all junk food is off the menu whereas a 'cut down' message means this is not so.

Cutting down is a bit like telling smokers they can have one and a half cigarettes a day. People in my target audience are not in the best of health and can contemplate cold turkey, whereas rich people with a busy social life absolutely cannot contemplate cutting the sugar.

There is a world of difference between health advice for the healthy and those that are far, far from it. 9 teaspoons of sugar a day, as recommended, is fine for the healthy, but for the person that is quite ill from sugar abuse over decades, cold turkey makes more sense. Yet the gatekeepers for these people are from the middle class world where sugar is not seen as the enemy.